Militants or Partisans: Labor Unions and Democratic Politics in Korea and Taiwan by Yoonkyung Lee

Author:Yoonkyung Lee [Lee, Yoonkyung]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Labor & Industrial Relations, Political Science
ISBN: 9780804781749
Google: C3IygAQDCjoC
Goodreads: 13211422
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2011-09-29T00:00:00+00:00

SOURCE: Taiwan Election and Democratization Study Surveys (TEDS), various years.

NOTES: LY = Legislative Yuan elections, and the number in parentheses is the total number of survey respondents. (The analysis of this survey data was assisted by Pi-Han Tsai, graduate student in the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, University of California – San Diego, in June 2009.)

What were the conditions that brought unionists and parties to cooperate in democratized Taiwan? The political division around “ethnic justice” and well-institutionalized political parties served as channels of meaningful political representation for Taiwanese workers. As discussed in Chapter 3, the political division of authoritarianism versus democratization in Taiwan overlapped with and reinforced the identity divisions between mainlanders and Taiwanese. Democratization meant the ending of the KMT regime, supported by mainlanders, and the restoration of ethnic justice for the Taiwanese people.18 Democracy and ethnic justice were inseparable issues for the political opposition in Taiwan. In the words of Shelley Rigger, who has closely observed Taiwan politics (2001, 310),

For many ROC citizens, loosening the ruling party’s political control meant self-determination for the majority ethnic group; “democratization” was defined as a Taiwan governed by and for the Taiwanese majority. In short, ethnic justice and political reform were inextricably connected, and together they formed the opposition party’s ideological foundation.

This political division has been the dominant one in Taiwan’s post-transition electoral contestations. An elite survey of Taiwanese politicians also confirms that the national identity has been the most salient issue in characterizing post-transition party competition. When they were asked “What have been the most salient issues in Taiwan’s elections over the last decade [1991–2001]?” they all equivocally responded with “national identity,” regardless of their partisan affiliation (Fell 2005, 27).19 Taiwan’s political parties have competed on clear and stable positions and contributed to higher levels of party identification among their voters.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.